Giving to Scripps

Saying Goodbye to GroupWise – Email Conversion Update

Posted: January 16, 2015

Dear Scripps College Community,

At the start of the academic year, we shared the news that Scripps had selected Office365 to replace GroupWise with launch date of March 24, 2015. With the fall semester closed, I wanted to provide a progress update to the community including new benefits announced recently by Microsoft.

Desktop Software

One major element of the implementation plan was to have the Scripps community using the current version of Office 365:

User Support has concluded testing our new staff, faculty, and lab windows desktop software image with general deployment starting this week. This new image includes the latest Office 2013 suite and Adobe products, updated and new web browsers, and the latest versions of all of our academic software including but not limited to SPSS, Matlab, Maple, and SAS.

All college-owned computers will eventually be upgraded and appointments requests have started to go out.

All labs, smart classrooms, and residential computer rooms have already been upgraded over break.

Training

Lynda.com is the primary online training vehicle for learning more about Office365. Our community has already viewed over 2800 videos totaling over 200 hours. If you’ve yet to explore Lynda.com, get started today

User Support will offer additional training options including but not limited to group/department and train the trainer sessions. A detailed schedule for the training sessions will be sent out shortly.

Office365 information site

As we progress with the implementation plan, a website will be available to share information with the Scripps community with final touches being made.

Testing

As the new desktop software is rolled out, IT will begin to distribute Office365 test accounts to the community. This will allow the community to become acquainted with the new system before it goes live.

New Benefits

Office ProPlus suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) will be free for faculty, staff, and students. This new benefit allows our community to install the full Office suite on up to five personal PCs or Macs, and unlock the editing capabilities on the Office apps for tablets such as the iPad. This benefit will be rolled out along with the distribution of Office365 accounts to our community.